Ivanus stood in awe, watching the radiant orb and its tail of fire growing larger and larger in the sky.

He stood in the market of the city of Asil. Men and women streamed around him, while others did as he did, watching death come down. It had been prophesied that the meteor would come, and then the world would die of fire. It radiated a striking hue.Ivanus shut out the sounds around him. Silence loomed past the screams of his city’s people.

A vast burning ring ripped in his planet’s atmosphere as the meteor punched through.

A second passed.

It hit as if in slow motion, pummeling the earth miles before him, and a massive shockwave blinked the plants, city and people from existence. But in that instant, something punched Ivanus through his skin and muscle. It held his body solid while he watched the world flatten in the meteor’s wake. He watched as glowing spirits splintered and burst forth from the crag.

His stomach lurched. Black swelled over him. His body disappeared from the expanse of the land, leaving nothing where he once stood. He was gone from that time.

When Ivanus opened his eyes, centuries later, radiant sunlight burned his retinas. Before him, a woman screamed in pain.

The character Julieth in NovaForge is an intense, headstrong female character with vast feathered wings and a leaning towards the bow and arrow. She’s tough, and yet in a world that has been decimated by years of a corrupt humanity, she is the character with the most heart. She understands the need for battle, and yet struggles in her mind against it.

The origin of the name Julieth has a long history for me. Each one of my books has a character in it that in some way came out of my poetry book, Dusk Crescence. In NovaForge Julieth is that character. There was a character in Dusk Crescence named Julieth who was a winged woman. She had a different personality than this Julieth, but that is the name’s original usage in my books. When I created the name I was in High School, sitting in class looking at a friend of mine, Judy. I needed a name and I thought… Judith, Judie, Julie, Juliet. But Juliet is Shakespeare’s character’s name. Then I added an H. Julieth. So now you know where and how. Julieth is a key player in NovaForge. Check out an excerpt below involving her character. I take great pride in Julieth.NovaForge releases Saturday May 3rd.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She fell to the ground, clenching earth with her hands and barely seeing Ivanus dragging Bayne’s limp body away from her. Her back quaked as something ripped from her flesh. It felt like a writhing serpent, moving, but still connected to her. A moment later another surge of pain struck her as another massive thing burst out of her back. A slimy substance oozed around her on the red soil. The pain receded as regular sight returned. Feathers blew in the wind away from her, covered in the same gooey substance on the earth around her body.

“You have wings!” Ivanus called out nearby. “Vast, beautiful wings. I didn’t know what they were when I saw them in my sight.”What is he saying? Julieth worked through the remaining pain, trying to pull together her thoughts. She could move the things protruding from her back, and could feel them as if they were her limbs. What is going on? Do I really have wings? She could believe it if she had somehow bonded with an essence, but had never seen wings in person before. All species of flight perished shortly after the meteor, except for one man who had been possessed by the essences. He was rumored to be part dragon, but she had never seen him.

Whatever struck me when Ivanus arrived, those must have been essences from his time, if he is telling the truth. Julieth touched her chest where the things had entered her, and then reached around her back to feel for their markings. Her hands touched slime, and then the intricate patterns of fresh muscle and feathers. A shiver ran through her and she used the new muscles protruding from her back to curve her wings before her and into her sight. Their ivory white feathers were beautiful. They are a part of me, she thought in surreal wonder.

With the approaching release of my Sci-Fi novel, NovaForge, I’ve recently been editing, re-editing, hashing and re-hashing over word after word in the document. I’ve been asking for opinions, taking some really good advice and getting extremely excited for the release. And as I examine each word with a fine-toothed comb I’ve been thinking of all the memories for me within the work. That’s what’s so fantastic for an author. Each character’s name has a story behind it that you may never know as a reader. Sometimes a character will experience things just because that author was experiencing something similar that sparked that idea or a character will have an emotion because of what went on in the author’s life. When you read a book you enjoy a fantastic story that transports you in to an incredible new realm or experience. But as the author we revisit a realm we created and remember all these experiences that helped shape what we wrote in the book.As we near the release I thought I’d share one of these. There’s a character in NovaForge who has the ability to morph from human to dragon form. When he is in human form he burns a brilliant light. The man’s name is Shaun Dune. So how did the name come about? For a few weeks my daughter kept saying that her ‘invisible friend’ son’s name was Shaun Dune, and as I listened to that name day after day I thought, Hey, that’s a really cool name. And so I stole it. My daughter has officially named her first book character and every time I read the name I’ll be reminded of that and that fun experience with her.Look for NovaForge when it releases on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com Saturday May 3rd! It will be at Barnes&Noble.com shortly after that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Solaris. A planet like any other, rife with wars, science and love. But at the peak of its civilization, a great meteor fell, bringing long-dead souls to Solaris, souls that had been sustained by the life-force of one lone man, Ineal.At the moment of impact, these souls scattered across Solaris, giving inhuman abilities to mortals while scarring their bodies and corrupting their lives.Samuel was one such man, a man of faith who thought to use his powers to worship his God: he watched his followers, and his planet, die. Seas turned to lava and the skies darkened. And as Samuel’s heart grew weary and angry, he used his powers to manipulate the world to serve him alone.Samuel became god of a planet whose only life was the symbiotic life so like his own.Centuries later, he discovered others, threats that had not been on this planet before. A winged woman; a cyborg; a future-seer and a child. A great vengeance burned a comradery between them.They were souls that could overthrow him. Souls that he would need to destroy.